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[T]he teams at CERN were able to make a number of updates and improvements to the particle accelerator to support new, next-generation science during the scheduled shutdown. As the most powerful accelerator in the world, the LHC can generate hundreds of millions of particle collisions every second. Although the LHC has led to new physics research throughout both of its previous, successful runs, teams at CERN hope to push their explorations with the new upgrades implemented during the shutdown. Included in these improvements, CERN has increased the power of the LHC's injectors, which feed the beams of accelerated particles into...

Today, workers at the world’s largest atom smasher are breaking ground on a performance-enhancing upgrade that will allow scientists to conduct even bigger and better physics experiments. The upgrade will turn the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland into the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). The upgrade will allow the machine to collide even more particles, potentially helping physicists see new stuff. “The HL-LHC will enable us to do many things, opening many unexplored areas of research,” Rebeca Gonzalez Suarez, a postdoc research associate at CERN, told Gizmodo in an email. The Large Hadron Collider is essentially two 16-mile-round rings...

The Large Hadron Collider suffered a power outage last night, after a luckless weasel decided to chew on a 66-kilovolt power cable. It’s not the first time the LHC, a 17-mile superconductor that smashes atoms together at close to the speed of light, has run into trouble because of something small and cute. In 2009, the power went down after a bird dropped a baguette onto a critical electrical system. Although the incident was widely reported and confirmed at the time by sources at the LHC, CERN is apparently now telling folks it may be apocryphal. “This was a story...

Scientists at CERN have confirmed the existence of a new 'exotic' particle International team used the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) detector The particle was first detected in 2007 but it has only now been confirmed Dubbed Z(4430), the discovery challenges existing models of physics It may also indicate that a new type of neutron star, a quark star, existsIn the early 1930s, scientists were fairly confident they understood subatomic physics. That was until dozens of new elementary particles were discovered in the 1950s, forcing scientists to rewrite their models. Now a new particle, first detected in 2007 but not...

A progress report from the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator has declared that the Higgs boson, dubbed the “God particle,” has been found. The discovery of the new particle is a major step toward confirming the Standard Model used in modern physics. Professor John Womersley said, “They have discovered a particle consistent with the Higgs boson… That is confirmed...."

A rumor is floating around the physics community that the world's largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle." The controversial rumor is based on what appears to be a leaked internal note from physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile-long particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. It's not entirely clear at this point if the memo is authentic, or what the data it refers to might mean — but the note already has researchers talking. The buzz started when an anonymous commenter recently posted an abstract...

Antimatter atoms have been trapped for the first time, scientists say. Researchers at Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider, have held 38 antihydrogen atoms in place, each for a fraction of a second. Antihydrogen has been produced before but it was instantly destroyed when it encountered normal matter. The team, reporting in Nature, says the ability to study such antimatter atoms will allow previously impossible tests of fundamental tenets of physics. The current "standard model" of physics holds that each particle - protons, electrons, neutrons and a zoo of more exotic particles - has its mirror image antiparticle. The...

A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world. The LHC successfully collided particles at record force earlier this week, a milestone Mr Cole was attempting to disrupt by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the experiment's vending machines. He also claimed responsibility for the infamous baguette sabotage in November last year. Mr Cole was seized by Swiss police after CERN security guards spotted...

Initial results from high-energy proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider offer first glimpse of physics at new energy frontier.In December, the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, shattered the world record for highest energy particle collisions. This week, team led by researchers from MIT, CERN and the KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics in Budapest, Hungary, completed work on the first scientific paper analyzing the results of those collisions. Its findings show that the collisions produced an unexpectedly high number of particles called mesons — a factor that will have to be taken into account...

GENEVA – The world's largest atom smasher has recorded its first high-energy collisions of protons, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. Physicists hope those collisions will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter, antimatter and ultimately the creation of the universe billions of years ago, which many theorize occurred as a massive explosion known as the Big Bang. The collisions occurred Tuesday evening as the Large Haldron Collider underwent test runs in preparation for operations next year, said Christine Sutton of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN. Two beams of circulating particles traveling in opposite directions at 1.18...

ZURICH (Reuters) -- Scientists have smashed together proton beams for the first time in a 27-kilometre tunnel under the French-Swiss border in an initial step toward discovering how the universe came into existence, they said on Monday. Scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) hope experiments will already start giving clues about the origins of the universe in the coming months as the world's biggest particle collider starts moving to full power. "It's a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time," said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer about the collision, achieved by sending...

GENEVA (AFP) – The world's biggest atom-smasher, shut down after its inauguration in September 2008 amid technical faults, restarted on Friday, a spokesman for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research said. "The first tests of injecting sub-atomic particles began around 1600 (1500 GMT)," CERN spokesman James Gillies told AFP. He said the injections lasted a fraction of a second, enough for "a half or even a complete circuit" of the Large Hadron Collider built in a 27-kilometre (17-mile) long tunnel straddling the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. "If all goes well tonight we will try to circulate a beam of particles...

The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation. The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident,...

More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang. Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter...

Can we calculate the gravitational field of a mass moving close to the speed of light? Franklin Felber (Starmark Inc) believes he can, with implications for propulsion. Back in 2006 we looked briefly at Felber’s work, describing what the physicist believes to be a repulsive gravitational field that emerges from his results. Felber discussed the matter at the Space Technology and Applications International meeting that year, where he presented his calculations of the ‘relativistically exact motion of a payload in the gravitational field of a source moving with constant velocity.’ Above a certain critical velocity, Felber believes, any mass...

When the LHC first went down, it was believed that repairs could get the system up and running by April 2009. Then we saw repairs pushing the timeline back to summer 2009. But now, CERN has arrived at a fork in the road regarding LHC repairs. According to spokesperson James Gillies, the complicated repairs can be simplified into modest Plan A and Plan B approach. Plan A is a quick and dirty fix, getting the particle accelerator online as quickly as possible (late summer 2009) at the cost of operating at lower power. In this scenario, 3 of 8 pressure...

A group of Greek hackers broke into the particle accelerator's systems just as scientists were turning it on in front of the world's media Monday, 15th September 2008 Even as the scientists at CERN, the centre for nuclear research, were switching on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator under Geneva last week, a group of Greek hackers were one step away from controlling a 12,500-ton electromagnet that serves as one of the machine’s four detectors. The intruders posted a lengthy note in Greek on the machine’s network introducing themselves as ‘the Greek Security Team’, mocking the system’s poor security...

Hackers have mounted an attack on the Large Hadron Collider, raising concerns about the security of the biggest experiment in the world.As the first particles were circulating in the machine near Geneva where the world wide web was born, a Greek group hacked into the facility, posting a warning about weaknesses in its infrastructure. Calling themselves the Greek Security Team, the interlopers mocked the IT used on the project, describing the technicians responsible for security as "a bunch of schoolkids."

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Excerpt - GENEVA, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) started up a huge particle-smashing machine on Wednesday, aiming to re-enact the conditions of the "Big Bang" that created the universe. Experiments in the Large Hadron Collider, a 10 billion Swiss franc ($9 billion) accelerator built underneath the Swiss-French border, could unlock the remaining secrets of particle physics and answer questions about the universe and its origins.